There is a hot thread going on right now somewhere about a young couple that is having problems. Every forum has long discussions about the added risk of age gaps. The thread I mentioned got me thinking if there may be an even greater risk. International marriages of two very young people.

Often in the age gap threads young RW are those who voice the greatest objections to a marriage of a younger woman to an older man. Most site that for them to be happy they need a handsome young man with a great body. Now what I am seeing is a lot of young women married to young men and having a rough time in their marriage.

The possibility has entered my mind that you have two people with very little experience with marriage coping with the difficulties of adjusting to a new culture, a new country, looking for a job, adapting to a very different life and that for these well meaning young people that they may face far more challenges and difficulties than a younger woman marrying an older guy who has more relationship and marriage experience and may have mellowed out a bit.

In the discussion going on elsewhere the husband told his young wife if she didn't vacumn the floor he would divorce her which is a very immature thing to say and hurt her badly. It makes me think that youth may be more of an obsticle to overcome than an age gap. Anyone have any thoughts or comments on this idea?

_________________Don't take life too seriously, After all no one gets out alive anyway.

I agree that youth immaturity and inexperience can be an obstacle.The only caveat that I will add to this is that In My Humble Opinion the problems of youth ext. are different to the problems caused by a large age gap.

I dare also say that the problems caused by immaturity and inexperience relate to the cultures of the participants what I am trying to say here is that

couple 1 him from country A her from country B

may be less suited to each other than

couple 2 him from country C her from country B

and even less suited than

couple 3 him from country C her from country A

Yes I agree that an older guy who has more relationship and marriage experience and may have mellowed out a bit may be more understanding of a foreign brides needs and adaptation problems, but I still think that the age gap will be a big (and often disruptive) issue as time goes by. The needs and wants (both mental and physical) of a twenty year old woman may be meet by a fifty year old man, a sixty year old man will be pressed to meet the needs of a thirty year old woman and when she is forty and he is seventy he will not make the grade.

My opinion, those that disagree, plaese feel free to shoot me down in flames.

I am sure we all agree that a couple with young age is lacking life experience in general and of course has not much experience in relationships too!

With that in mind, it becomes obvious that the couples, after the honeymoon period will start having some problems and arguments will develop slowly, during the adaptation period. Because when they are younger they are more excitable and stubborn due to their inexperience, ignorance and immaturity.

A more mature couple, obviously, will have more experience to handle difficult situations, during the important period of adaptation, from single hood to living with another adult person. If they have been married before then one of the partners will have more experience and should help the other in their adaptation.

I was never a supporter of large age gaps between the partners because that alone creates different problems and in most cases the couple has very little in common. On the other hand if the couple is over 40 years old then the age gap is minimised and in most cases is not noticeable by other people. The possibility of having many common interests is better and we hope that the two partners have common sense to resolve easier any problems appearing.

If older men choose a young wife then it is down to him to provide her with the support she needs to establish her self and also their relationship. We must not forget there are many variations in couples, when it comes to age differences and also many other elements come to play, especially in international relationships, which are plagued with additional obstacles, like language, cultural differences and are prone to miscommunication.

Communication, not just talk but understanding each other well is the cornerstone of any relationship!

The first step towards dealing with difficulties in our relationships is to look at our relationship with our self. This might sound odd if you haven't thought about it before, but we all bring experiences, thoughts, expectations and needs to our relationships. We need a reasonable understanding of how this “emotional baggage”, is contributing to problems in our relationship - and we can benefit by using simple exercises in self-reflection.

Shut your eyes and try to think of nothing. Soon you'll find that your mind fills up with self-talk, a commentary we make to ourselves as we go through life. The mind hates a void, so it fills it with this commentary. Self-talk often includes predictions of the way various situations will turn out. When you predict a negative outcome, you may be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

By using self-talk, you can identify what you expect from a relationship. You might discover unrealistic expectations - couples should never disagree, for example, or that you should do everything together - that are contributing to the tension.

Sometimes you'll use more wide-ranging and destructive thoughts to bring problems to a dead end so it seems no more confrontation is needed. But this is, of course, just a way of avoiding the issues. Such generalisations include: “It's my (or your) fault!” “This kind of behaviour runs in my family” or “it's just fate”.

Often, this kind of belief generates negative self-talk and becomes so entrenched that the very idea of change is frightening. Your present situation may be far from ideal, but at least you know the pitfalls. With change comes uncertainty, which might lead to something worse.

As it appears the young lady in question has said and made a few exaggerations in her original post.... which now is back tracking.

What I find amazing, when I read these messages, is that people don't think what we read is one sided story..... and we don't exactly know the full details.... but people jump taking sides and making comments either supportive of criticising.

In reply to your title question on this thread........ I will answer YES...... NO good or excellent communication between the couple!

In your case you and your wife have a huge age gap BUT if your relationship is a happy one, in my view, it’s down to your excellent communication. Your wife speaks and writes Excellent English, therefore a huge problematic barrier has been removed in advance and it remained only your personalities to match. Her transformation to married and American life style must have been very easy and your daily life is much easier now!I wish my wife could speak the same English as yours, when I first met her…… but she does a good job now! (Kalasnikov!)

If your wife is happy living and sleeping with you, same applies for me too, there is no problem of the age gap? Is there?

When you met in Barnaul and she nursed you back to health from your flue….. you had plenty of face time to talk, get to know each other better, actually YOU got to know her ….. because she already knew everything about you!

I spent a year long time living in Russia, at times….. and had daily hours of conversations on the phone or on camera helping my wife to improve her English…….. before asking her to marry me.

I find it amazing and very naïve that some of your co-patriots go over there, meet women who need the help of a translator, speaks very little English or none and then they start the K-1 Visa and get married…. And when later a divorce becomes inevitable…….cry foul. They will never admit that their actions were wrong from the start!

Age is and does bring many problems but lack of good Communication is, in my view, the biggest problem in our International relationships.

The woman's roots in her own country. The stronger the ties of her family/friends , the worse her homesickness will be when she moves permanently. Couples can break their relationship on this.

To avoid this problem, the best you can do is get her settled quickly with a real job and or other activities that gets her away from the new family home.

I totally agree with your observation and I have to admit, if I had not installed the MSN messenger, in our house in Russia, and trained Baboushka how to use the computer, today probably I would have been single again.

My wife has a permanent job and has been working for the past 2 years but when at home, nearly every day, is talking for hours to my mother in law on MSN and also to the rest of the family.

We have to admit and accept that the family ties of our Russian partners are very strong and deep seated in their persona and there not much we can do about it, apart from grining and bear it!

So anybody looking for a partner in the FSU countries should bear that in mind.

Something I learned in my business life that I think can also be applied to marriages is that the main cause of disappointment and failure is "unfullfilled expectations"

What I am trying to say is when someone hires someone, marries someone, lives with someone, has a relationship or whatever, they usually enter that with some thoughts in their mind of what they expect the results to be.

It is far more important how those thoughts about what they expect compare to reality than what reality really is.

I guess what I am saying is if a woman marries a poor man with limited income and finds in the marriage that leading a simple life they can get along just fine and even enjoy a few things in life, she will likely be happy.

If a woman marries a man who has talked about the lavish lifestyle he will provide and in reality they can have a lot but not quite a lavish lifestyle, she is likely to be disappointed.

I have seen a lot of marriages, in my 7 years on these boards. Some happy, some not and a few that have ended. I can't see age difference as that important. When I look at the relationships I see right now the one that seems the most unhappy is a young woman who was always very anti-age differences and married a young, but immature guy. She seems miserable and he doesn't seem much happier. Personally as I hear her story I tend to think she would be happier with an older guy who dotes on her and makes her feel special rather than a young one with a hot body who sits on the couch drinking beer and paying little attention to her.

_________________Don't take life too seriously, After all no one gets out alive anyway.

I guess what I am saying is if a woman marries a poor man with limited income and finds in the marriage that leading a simple life they can get along just fine and even enjoy a few things in life, she will likely be happy.

I think the following comment you made is spot on with our situation.

Today on a London station I was listening to the subject we are discussing here and as it happens, I was very surprised to hear too many men calling and stating the same comments as you said above. Most of these men had partners with ages differences between 15 to 30 years old, are married for many years and have no problem with the age difference and from what I understood most of them were very happy.

As you know me and my wife have a 19 years difference and frankly neither me or my wife have any problems. On the contrary we are very happy going out holding hands and even kissing in the public. After 3 1/2 years here we hardly had anybody making any comments.

Who is online

Registered users: No registered users

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum